Santuary Onslaught with Boss Fight Reworks

[ES3M]

During it's development DE said that Sanctuary Onslaught would be Warframe's Arcade Endgame. I think it's missed the mark on that but that could be easily remedied with the addition of some Warframe's gamier features - Namely some changes to efficiency, the addition of modified boss fights and rotating drops. I've encountered very few people that play ESO because it's fun, they're almost always meta-built Saryn's looking to farm affinity, relics or Vandal parts. I will grant it's pretty satisfying to see waves of numbers quake out from your personal patient zero it's also just about the only viable way of getting past round four. How I propose we change that is with The Index. Arbitrations just got Index Points ctrl+v'd into it's mechanics so why doesn't the literal arcade mode get some tokens? Broadly: Require the collection and banking of Index style Points.

Precisely: Every enemy drops a gold token on death that must be collected by a player and dropped off into the Zone Portal. Tokens do not debuff the player and visually appear above their head as a simple number, not an orbit of blinding specks. In order to advance to each Zone players must deposit a set number of tokens then go through as normal. Efficiency bonus for depositing large sums of points, like Index. Four Zones drop common loot. So far so basic, all this has done is make players run around a little more and maybe gave tanks something to do. Well this is just step one. Step two is the reworking and addition of bosses from the rest of the game.

Does anybody else feel like the Exploiter Orb is too good a fight to be wasted in one location? I sure do and I think using some of the design philosophy from her epic battle would breath new life into old boss fights and Sanctuary Onslaught. I'll leave the individual reworks ideas to the specialists but just for example: Imagine a nice, big, juicy, guaranteed drop sitting in a big empty room called Zone 5. Just before you grab it a fat Sortie Vay Hek swoops in and EATS IT! He laughs at you and you want him dead, sounds like it's time for a Boss Battle! Every 5 Zones you fight an assassination target, beefed up from normal and sortie level in Elite SO who not only drops their regular loot but also the rarer drop you just saw. Before the fight you are shown the item the boss is defending so you know before you go through the trouble, cough Wolf cough, what you're fighting for. Simaris invited us to dinner he might as well tell us what he's cooking. That SO drop is either rolled just before each boss fight with the same old rates OR the more fun option, is the Daily that only drops from E/SO Bosses but the rate goes up a little for every assassination finished in one run. The boss you fight is totally random and can include Orbs Mothers, Jordas, whatever! Remember the underlying conceit for the addition of bosses is that they're given some touch ups. Make them fun in ESO, they'll be fun back on their home nodes. We scanned the gits, so Simaris has them all somewhere. Now that I think about it, given the "digital" nature of the Sanctuary it's be a great place to let us test in-development content, like the Public Beta Enviroment of other games. If nothing else the bosses could also be optional in SO and drop nothing but a little participation efficiency if failed.

More involved efficiency, better presentation, milestone boss fights and truly fun to play! This is my vision for the Sanctuary of tomorrow. If nothing else I hope this at least gives DE some good ideas for how to approach other problems down the line. I'm just sick of the stuff hyped as entertaining turning into a new method to grind.